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Archive for April, 2010

During the month of April, the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) is offering full-text access to 14 select articles in its two peer reviewed journals, “Health Education and Behavior” and “Health Promotion Practice.”

To help public health professionals respond to the problem of limited health literacy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have launched a free “Health Literacy for Public Health Professionals Online Training” program. The purpose of this training is to educate public health professionals about limited health literacy and their role in addressing it in a public health context.
This is a web-based course and can be accessed 24/7 by any computer with Internet access. It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to complete. Trainees can earn a variety of continuing education credits. You can access the training program from: http://www2a.cdc.gov/TCEOnline/registration/detailpage.asp?res_id=2074.
For a link to CDC’s and other HHS’ agencies’ health literacy sites, check out AHRQ’s Health LIteracy and Cultural Competence Resource Links at: http://www.ahrq.gov/browse/hlitres.htm.

The Maternal and Child Health Library released a new edition of the knowledge path, Physical Activity and Children and Adolescents. This electronic guide points to resources that analyze data, describe public health campaigns and other promotion programs, and report on research aimed at identifying promising strategies for improving physical activity levels within families, schools and after-school programs, child care and early childhood education settings, and communities. The knowledge path also presents resources about physical activity for children and adolescents with special health care needs. The knowledge path is available at http://www.mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/kp_phys_activity.html. Knowledge paths on other maternal and child health (MCH) topics are available at http://www.mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/index.html.

• While African Americans account for 13% of the U.S. population, they are diagnosed with more than 50% of all new HIV infections.
• Asian Americans have the highest tuberculosis rate of any population in the US.
• American Indians experience higher rates of STDs and injuries.
• Latinos are also less likely to get a flu vaccine and more at risk for HIV/AIDS and diabetes.

The CDC supports 40 grantee partners through REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) . The goal of REACH is to establish community based programs and culturally-appropriate interventions to eliminate health disparities for African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans, Alaska Native and Pacific Islanders. Currently there are REACH projects in New England including: the Boston Public Health Commission, Breast and Cervical Cancer Coalition and Boston Elders project; the Center for Community Health, Education and Research Metropolitan Boston Haitian HIV Coalition; the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center Latino Health project; and the Lowell Community Health Center Cambodian Health Program. REACH highlights success stories in their booklets: The Power to Reduce Health Disparities: Voices from REACH Communities and REACHing across the Divide: Finding Solutions to Health Disparities.

The National Library of Medicine offers many outstanding resources for minority health:

This project is funded by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Cooperative Agreement Number UG4LM012347 with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.